On Tue, 2007-09-25 at 07:09 +1000, Res wrote:
True unlimited or not, no ISP is in business to lose money, if all those other users who cost them only 20, start costing them 70, thats becomes a break-even or no-profit, add users like you and its a clear loss, you will find one of two things happening, prices skyrocket or your hit with data caps to stop the abuse so they can make a profit.
True enough, but I tend to think that those who've placed a dollar value on the byte have inflated it's true value by a rather large magnitude.
I don't think unlimited is really needed, but if they started charging a truely appropriate amount, we'd be better off. If they had their way, it'd be a dollar a byte.
It is typical for ISPs not to install the amount of infrastructure really required for their clients. That started with dial-up, with not enough phone lines for the number of their customers that wanted to be on-line simultaneously. That problem's largely overcome, thesedays, particularly with always-on DSL and cable, they've had to bite the bullet. But it's still common enough for them to not have enough bandwidth for all their clients.